Visual Camp

Visual Camp took place last Tuesday; a mini unconference organised by the DotGovLabs innovation hub to kickstart dialogue between  policymakers and visual communicators. It was a space to explore how visuals might help communicate policies and issues, and how those of us working visually could work with public services and civil society to communicate policies & issues.

Mindful Maps gave a short introduction alongside the marvellous Simply Understand to present the groups with a few thoughts on visualisation which I will write up into a separate post (download the slides here).

We then went into workgroups around various themes. Laura Sorvala and I were in the ‘Maps showing the issues communities really care about’ group, where there was a lively discussion about what the value of map-making might be in terms of creating change.

From the Come to Your Senses event the previous weekend, we had a lot of questions related to this; what do we do with emotional and experiential data once we’ve collected it? How can this type of tool be of real value? How can we design and facilitate the map-making process in communities to make it helpful & relevant to contextual issues?

Image: Laura Sorvala, from this blog post analysing the themes from Come to Your Senses.

This will be an ongoing conversation, as many of the questions asked in the discussion provoked more questions! These are some of the main points covered:

• Maps can facilitate change by helping people connect the dots
• Maps can help us harvest human capital
• The data collected is important, but it’s what we do with it that will actually make a difference
• Maps can aid us in remembering data – conversations, opinions, issues etc
• Can maps translate between the public and policy, and act as a tool to help us find a common language?
• By enabling participation, map-making can give people permission to express opinions and emotions
• Maps can be powerful simply as visions, which can spark real change by altering perceptions, empowering the user and engaging people

More to come on this topic soon, hopefully facilitated by future visual camp conversations!